The SSD In The New MacBook Air Is 217% Faster Than Before

The new MacBook Air not only has up to 512GB of flash storage, it's also a whole lot faster than before.

The MacBook Air has never been a slouch in terms of performance, but with the 2012 model, SSD performance is scoring a whopping 217% higher than ever before.

In tests run by OSXDaily, read speeds reached a maximum of 461MB/s, and write speeds hit 364MB/s, a dramatic increase over the 2011 model, which scored just a modest 145MB/s read speed and a 152MB/s write speed.

CPU speeds are also reportedly roughly 15-20% faster, but the major difference is of course the SSD. It’s interesting to note that the SSD in the new MacBook Air appears to be manufactured by Toshiba, while the 2011 models had Samsung drives. While this could likely be a factor in the increased performance, some new MacBook Airs are also shipping with Samsung drives, so the difference in brand is probably negligible.

Either way, its safe to say that the new MacBook Air is now one of the fastest laptops available, right up there with the new, Retina display MacBook Pro.

If you’d like to test the speeds of your own drive, you can use the free DiskSpeedTest application, available in the Mac App Store. Tell us what you scored in the comments.